The Firm of Girdlestone by Arthur Conan Doyle (epub ebook reader txt) 📕

The girl stopped, all in a tremble. In the shadow of the trees there was a camp-stool, and on the camp-stool sat a savage-looking man, dressed in a dark corduroy suit, with a blackened clay pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth. His weather-beaten mahogany face was plentifully covered with small-pox marks, and one of his eyes was sightless and white from the effects of the same disease. He rose now, and interposed himself between her and the gate.

"Sink me, if it ain't her," he said slowly, surveying her from head to foot. "I were given to understand that she was a spanker, an' a spanker she be." With this oracular remark he took a step back and surveyed Kate again with his one eye.

"My good man," she said, in a trembling voice, for his appearance was far from reassuring, "I wish to go past and to get to Bedsworth. Here is a shilling, and I beg that you will not detain me."

Her companion stretched out a very dirty hand, took the coin, spun it up in the air, caught it, bit it, and finally plunged it into the depths of his trouser pockets. "No road this way, missy," he said; "I've given my word to the guv'nor, and I can't go back from it."

"You have no right to detain me," Kate cried angrily. "I have good friends in London who will make you suffer for this."

"She's a-goin' to flare up," said the one-eyed man; "knock me helpless, if she ain't!"

"I shall come through!" the girl cried in desperation. She was only a dozen yards from the lane which led to freedom, so she made a quick little feminine rush in the hope of avoiding this dreadful sentinel who barred her passage. He caught her round the waist, however, and hurled her back with such violence that she staggered across the path, and would have fallen had she not struck violently against a tree. As it was, she was badly bruised and the breath shaken out of her body.

"She has flared up," said the one-eyed man, removing his pipe from his lips. "Blow me asunder if she bean't a rustler!" He brought his camp-stool from the side of the pillar and, planting it right in the centre of the gateway, sat down upon it again. "You see, missy," he remarked, "it's no manner o' use. If you did get out it would only be to be put in a reg'lar 'sylum."

"An asylum!" gasped Kate, sobbing with pain and anger. "Do you think I am mad, then?"

"I don't think nowt about it," the man remarked calmly. "I knows it."

This was a new light to Kate. She was so bewildered that she could hardly realize the significance of the remark.

"Who are you?" she said. "Why is it that you treat me in this cruel way?"

"Ah, now we come to business," he said, in a satisfied way, crossing his legs, and blowing great wreaths from his pipe. "This is more like reason. Who am I? says you. Well, my name's Stevens—Bill Stevens, hesquire, o' Claxton, in the county o' Hants. I've been an A.B. in the navy, and I've got my pension to show it. I've been in the loon'cy business, too—was second warder in the suicide ward at Portsmouth for more'n two year. I've been out of a billet for some time, and Muster Girdlestone he came to me and he says, 'You're William Stevens, hesquire?' says he. 'I am,' says I. 'You've had experience o' loonies?' says he. 'I have,' says I. 'Then you're the man I want,' says he. 'You shall have a pound a week an' nothing to do.' 'The very crib for me,' says I. 'You've got to sit at the gate,' says he, 'and prevent a patient from gettin' out!' That was all as he said. Then you comes down from Lunnon, an' I comes up from Claxton, and here we be, all snug an' comfort'ble. So, you see, missy, it ain't no use at all, and you'll never get out this way."

"But if you let me past he will think that I ran by so quickly that you could not stop me. He could not be very angry then, and I shall give you more money than you would lose."

"No, no," said the man, shaking his head energetically, "I'm true to my colours, sink me, but I am! I never was bribed yet, and never will be unless you can offer cash down instead o' promises. You can't lay them by to live on in your old age."

"Alas!" Kate cried, "I have no money except these few shillings."

"Give them over here, then." He put them in his trouser pocket beside the other one. "That's all right, missy," he said, in a beery whisper. "I won't say anything now to Muster Girdlestone about this job. He'd be wild if he knew, but mum's the word with William Stevens, hesquire. Lor', if this ain't my wife a-comin' out wi' my dinner! Away with ye, away! If she seed me a-speakin' to you she'd tear your hair for you as like as not. She's jealous, that's what's the matter wi' her. If she sees a woman makin' much o' me, it's just pisen to her, and she goes for 'em straight. She's the one to make the fur fly! Away with you, I say!"

Poor Kate, appalled by the possibility of making a new enemy, turned and retraced her steps slowly and sadly up the avenue. As she glanced back she saw a gaunt, hard-featured woman trudging up the lane with a tin can in her hand. Lonely and forlorn, but not yet quite destitute of hope, she turned to the right among the trees, and pushed her way through bushes and brambles to the boundary of the Priory grounds. It was a lofty wall, at least nine feet in height, with a coping which bristled with jagged pieces of glass. Kate walked along the base Of it, her fair skin all torn and bleeding with scratches from the briars, until she satisfied herself that there was no break in it. There was one small wooden door on the side which was skirted by the railway line, but it was locked and impassable. The only opening through which a human being could pass was that which was guarded in the manner she had seen. The sickening conviction took possession of her mind that without wings it was an utter impossibility either to get away or to give the least information to any one in the world as to where she was or what might befall her.

When she came back to the house, tired and dishevelled after her journey of exploration, Girdlestone was standing by the door to receive her with a sardonic smile upon his thin lips. "How do you like the grounds, then?" he asked, with, the nearest approach to hilarity which she had ever heard from him. "And the ornamental fencing? and the lodge-keeper? How did you like them all?"

Kate tried for a moment to make some brave retort, but it was a useless attempt. Her lips trembled, her eyes filled, and, with a cry of grief and despair which might have moved a wild beast, she fled to her room, and, throwing herself upon her bed, burst into such scalding bitter tears as few women are ever called upon to shed.

That same evening Rebecca came down from London. Her presence was a comfort to Kate, for though she had never liked or trusted the girl, yet the mere fact of having some one of her own age near her, gave her a sense of security and of companionship. Her room, too, had been altered for the better, and the maid was given the one next door, so that by knocking on the wall she could always communicate with her. This was an unspeakable consolation, for at night the old house was so full of the sudden crackings of warped timber and the scampering of rats that entire loneliness was unendurable.

Apart from these uncanny sounds there were other circumstances which gave the Priory a sinister reputation. The very aspect of the building was enough to suggest weird impressions. Its high white walls were blotched with patches of mildew, and in some parts there were long greenish stains from roof to ground, like tear streaks on the crumbling plaster. Indoors there was a dank graveyard smell in the low corridors and narrow stair-cases. Floors and ceilings were equally worm-eaten and rotten. Broad flakes of plaster from the walls lay littered about in the passages. The wind, too, penetrated the building through many cracks and crannies, so that there was a constant sighing and soughing in the big dreary rooms, which had a most eerie and melancholy effect.

Kate soon learned, however, that, besides these vague terrors, all predisposing the mind to alarm and exciting the imagination, there was a general belief that another more definite cause for fear existed in the old monastery. With cruel minuteness of detail her guardian had told her the legend which haunted those gloomy corridors.

It appears that in olden times the Priory had been inhabited by Dominicans, and that in the course of years these monks had fallen away from their original state of sanctity. They preserved a name for piety among the country folk by their austere demeanour, but in secret, within the walls of their own monastery, they practised every sort of dissipation and crime.

While the community was in this state of demoralization, each, from the abbot downwards, vying with the other in the number and enormity of their sins, there came a pious-minded youth from a neighbouring village, who begged that he might be permitted to join the order. He had been attracted, he said, by the fame of their sanctity. He was received amongst them, and at first was not admitted to their revels, but gradually, as his conscience was supposed to become more hardened, he was duly initiated into all their mysteries. Horrified by what he saw, the good youth concealed his indignation until he had mastered all the abominations of the establishment, and then, rising up on the altar steps, he denounced them in fiery, scathing words. He would leave them that night, he said, and he would tell his experiences through the length and breadth of the country. Incensed and alarmed, the friars held a hasty meeting, and then, seizing the young novice, they dragged him down the cellar steps and locked him up there. This same cellar had long been celebrated for the size and ferocity of the rats which inhabited it which were so fierce and strong that even during the day they had been known to attack those who entered. It is said that long into the weary hours of the night, the fearful shrieks and terrible struggles of the captive, as he fought with his innumerable assailants, resounded through the long corridors.

"They do say that he walks about the house at times," Girdlestone said, in conclusion. "No one has ever been found who would live here very long since then. But, of course, such a strong-minded young woman as you, who cannot even obey your own guardian, would never be frightened by such a childish idea as that."

"I do not believe in ghosts, and I don't think I shall be frightened," Kate answered; but, for all that, the horrible story stuck in her mind, and added another to the many terrors which surrounded her.

Mr. Girdlestone's room was immediately above hers. On the second day of her imprisonment she went up on to this landing, for, having nothing to read save the Bible, and no materials for writing, she had little to do but to wander over the old house, and through the grounds. The door of Girdlestone's room was ajar, and she could not help observing as she passed that the apartment was most elegantly and comfortably furnished. So was the next room, the door of which was also open. The solid furniture and rich carpet contrasted strangely with her own